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After waking up early to get back to the Kazakhstan embassy after our rather annoying discovery that it was not open on Wednesday…

For anyone interested in getting a Kazakhstan visa in Istanbul the opening times are 10:30 to 12:30am on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for submitting applications and from 3:30 to 4:40 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.. Its closed on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. You MUST have your visa support/Letter of Invite printed out prior to submitting the application.

Sampling the local apple tea in Istanbul.

We ended up riding to the embassy as we now knew where it was… It took us around 30minutes to get to there. Upon arriving there was already a line of people waiting… After waiting around in the line for around an hour only to find that we had to have a copy of our Letter of invite.. We had been told previously that we could quote a reference number and they would have a copy on file.. Unfortunately this was not the case, they ended up being nice enough to take our memory stick and print out the two invites to include in our application. All up it took about 1.5 hours to submit the two applications. We got told to return on Friday between 3:30 and 4:30 pm… Now it was time to head back to our apartment. After a brief lunch while a thunderstorm rolled in we headed out to the Grand Bazaar.. The humidity after the storm was almost stifling.. After arriving at the Grand Bazaar we were immediately inundated with the vibrant colours of the jewellery and home goods, energy and smells of the carpets, spices and leather goods and anything else someone could sell.. As expected we got touted for all these things plus more.. “perfume perfume.. get your perfume..” Luckily for us we had become immune to their touts after our previous trip to Marocco. The Markets in Marocco are much more chaotic and the touts much per persistent than in Instanbul.

Some Arabic script on the wall Istanbul

Personally I enjoyed the markets in Istanbul but they are no match for Marocco. After several hours of working our way throught he maze, seeing some of the same shops several times as we got lost a few times we found our way out on the opposite side… We headed down towards the coast through yet more markets, shops and touting.. In the crowds the heat was intense, it was a welcome blessing to get some cool breeze as we came down the hill. At the bottom of the hill ended up finding a small electrical goods store which had portable multi-band radios.. It was listed at 32TL and after being worn out by the other touts we agreed on 30TL which was hugely in their favour.. Anyway we got our radio and paid around 1 Euro less for it.. ho hum.. We are by this time absolutely knackered from the heat (36c) and the constant walking and avoiding touts.. We ended up finding a small restaurant that served some traditional Turkish food and beers with comfortable seats for us to chill out and watch the world go by for some time.. It was great to be able to sit down after being on our feet constantly in the heat for about 4 hours… mmmmmm beer.. mmmmmm Turkish food.. While we drank and waited for the food we decided to bring out our new little radio.. The waiter had a look at it and laughed saying it was probably only worth 5TL…. He then served us our food..But only after trying to come across as being cool.. and instead smashing the terracotta urn that the food was prepared in.. It all went down a little too easily and after about 2 hours we decided to head back to our apartment and get some more beers on route..

Beer, Radio and Cards.. we ended up sitting in our room watching the world go by on the water as the sunset listening to our new radio (which actually worked) drinking beer playing 10 of a kind… Ahh relaxation…

After a few beers the night before we woke slightly later than usual but it was already baking hot.. It was 30c at 8am. It seems that we are finally starting to adjust to the heat. We had loads of chores to do and chased up many of our missing bike parts, replacement bike tyres, banking etc. All of the pieces in the pie are finally starting to fit together which is another reason why we had to stay for such a long time in Istanbul… After a morning of organisation and preparation it was time to head back to the Kazakh embassy.. after the 30minute ride out we ended up arriving about 25minutes before the afternoon visa pick up opening times… There was already a line of people waiting in the heat it was not something that we expected… After waiting in line for around an hour we finally managed to get into the visa office only to be told that our visa’s had been approved but we now needed to go to a Turkish bank and transfer some money into their account electronically and bring the receipt back to the embassy to pick up our passports. This was great news given that it was already 4:15pm and the office closed at 4:30.. The security guide was nice enough to give us a pretty drawing of the directions we needed to get to the bank.. After getting there the bank issued Heather a number for her in the queue while I parked the bike. There was a long wait and it felt unlikely that we would be able to get back to the embassy in time to get our passports today… which meant only one thing.. we would have to wait until Monday afternoon to pick up our visa.. ouch!.. it was not looking good.. It was great news when 5 people before us in the queue appeared to be no shows so we ended up getting in and paying the money in about 15 minutes it cost us 90 US dollars for two double entry visas (70 US dollars for single) making it with bank costs 320 TL.. That makes it record time for queuing since leaving the UK.. We raced back to the embassy as it was now about 4:45. It was a huge relief when the guard let us back in to pick up our passports despite being after closing time.. yay one for the win.. finally something went the right way..

Our trip home from the Kazakh embassy during Friday afternoon peak hour traffic was something of an adventure. The traffic which during normal times is crazy was actually crazy++. At least being on a bike we were able to filter around for the vast majority of the trip cutting the trip time down from what it could have been to only around 50minutes.. The traffic at the turn for the Sultanahmet was so crazy that they had police to enforce the lights as everyone was just ignoring the red lights and blocking the traffic. It was nice to see the police telling cars trying to push in to get lost…

The Turkish drivers really get angry when you can get in front of them on a bike.. especially if your on UK plates.. ha ha ha.. no match for a bike being able to go between the cars.. even when they try and box you in..

Given that most of our administration tasks had now been finalised we could focus on being tourists.

One of the Mosques in Istanbul's Sultanahmet

After a really long day travelling south along the black sea coast, we expected to be easily able to cross the boarder into turkey. Unfortunately there are very few boarder crossings with Turkey. The crossing that we ended up using meant that we travelled a few hundred kilometres back west so that we could cross just north of Edirne in Turkey.

The scenery on the side of the road heading towards Edirne Turkey

The scenery was beautiful but in the heat of the day it was starting to get too much doing the additional 250km. Eventually we got to the boarder crossing.. Finally leaving the EU and moving onto the next stage of our trip.. We arrived at the boarder crossing at 6.15pm and ended up leaving after 9pm.. only three hours. At least we now have some idea of what to expect when we go through other more serious boarder crossings.

First of all we exited from Bulgaria, yet again our papers all got checked for the bikes, Then we got checked again by Bulgaria for some unknown reason while they let all the cars just drive on past… We then sat in one of about 30 queues to get through to the Turkish Passport control.. There must been at least 2000 other cars in the queue.. Because the queues moved only one car at a time we pushed the bikes for the 500meters from the first gates to the passport control.. This was our “Fitness Program” of the moment. We would think that pushing the bikes may have been embarrassing.. well actually the vast majority of people were pushing their cars too…At Passport control we had to go and organise our visa’s which cost $20US each… Then we went on to Customs where we had to buy local Turkish third party motorcycle insurance which cost $30US for 30 days (per bike).After that we finally had all our stamps that we required to finally enter into Turkey at the third gate. YAY.. we are now in Turkey and its already dark. We hit the motorways heading towards Edirne where we took the exit to look for somewhere to stay. We found a campsite just outside of town on the D100 called “Omur Camping”.

Omur Camping… well lets just say a few things about this “special” campsite.. Its location was perfect for us to be able to go into Edirne and do some bits and pieces like organise accommodation in Istanbul.. It is by far the biggest rip off campsite that we have seen to date. They charge in Euro even though the local currency is now the Turkish Lira.. Not only do they charge for the tent, bikes and people like most campsites they also charge to use all the facilities.. 5euro to go for a swim, 3euro for a dog, 5euro to use the washing machine etc.. It was all very expensive given that we could have used the pools etc for free at all the campsites we have stayed at previously… No suprises that the place was dead quiet and people only stayed the absolute minimum time possible.. The other value added “feature” of the site was that they a huge population of killer mosquitoes just waiting for you in the showers, toilets, bathrooms, tent, outside, anywhere actually come to think of it…

Having a break in the heat.. with out taking your helmet off..

The temperatures are now sitting around 30-36c which is a big increase to what we got used to in Romania and Bulgaria. The roads in Turkey are much more civilized and people are much more aware of what is going on around them so far… Its a nice improvement but riding in these temperatures is definitely not for the faint hearted. We will need to start planning our days around much longer lunch breaks to take advantage of not being in the heat of the day…

Edirne is a beautiful city which we had to stop at not only for our organisational tasks but we had to have our first Turkish Kebab… How could we resist.. especially after such a long day previously getting out of Bulgaria (10am until 11pm).

Well we are on the final leg to get our Russian visas, cutting it fine as always though we like to live on the edge! The only visa that fits our journey is the 1 year multi entry business visa, costing us £1000 so we are praying we get it as thats a big loss in funds and our trip. We do have a backup plan however we feel confident with the OBT  the agency we have gone with, as they have come highly recommended.

We have just one final visa to get and that is for Kazakistan, however since we will be requiring a double entry visa which needs an invitation. The company that is organising it has advised us that we can only apply two months before date of entry. So we have organised few more days in Istanbul to get there which is great sure be a beautiful city so we dont mind staying a little longer to explore the nooks and crannies.

The trip is less than one month away and its almost finally apon us. We have planned to leave the UK  for good on Sunday 31st of May.

It is crazy how the time has been flying past only a week ago it felt like we had 2 months to go. Now we have 26 days and all the emotions are flowing. It has been two years in the planning/saving and its all coming to a head. Soon it will be all about riding motorcycles and being day in day out tourists on our little adventure… but until then its all about paper work, planning and preparation.